Leo Gura

@FirstglimpseOMG Yes, definitely you should be growing long before you reach enlightenment. Every baby step you can take it good. Sometimes you gotta fake it till you make it. Even if you aren't loving, sometimes you can just force yourself to behave lovingly, and although that's not ideal and can become a problem if over-done, it can be useful. You gotta start somewhere and you can't be too picky at the outset. @BLABLABLA Except it's not simple because you cannot imagine it, ever! So don't even try the imagination route. I'm just saying you need to be openminded and cognizant of your own mind's limitations. The mind must be smart enough to realize, "Hey, I will never get this, and that's okay because there's something beyond me at work here. I'm not the only game in town so let me stop acting as if I were."

@FirstglimpseOMG If you are stuck grasping at experiences, you will NEVER reach Absolute Truth. The Absolute cannot be an experience, because all experiences are limited and changing, hence non-absolute. In this work, you have to imagine that there is something beyond experience. A "thing" which cannot ever be experienced, but can nevertheless be known.

It definitely works. The trouble is that you gotta remember to apply it, again and again and again and again.

Become more conscious of THAT result. Do you like that result? If not, then bite the bullet and learn to pace yourself. Your suffering is there to teach you all the lessons you need to learn. The trick is to be conscious of the lesson when it hits you. It's all too easy to lose sight of the lesson as we get mesmerized by the emotions of it.

They look promising. Wish I had more time for it.

Depends on the habit, but 90 days is a good solid number if it's a serious habit like meditation, gym, etc.

@ChimpBrain http://amzn.to/2np5QMI

@LRyan Spirituality is not so fragile that one therapist's methods can break it. You can probably do his methods and still maintain all your spiritual practices. That is, if you were really hard-pressed. But the obvious answer here is: Why continue seeing someone who isn't aligned with your values? The biggest benefits from therapy come when the therapist and client are a team. They both have to trust each other, share similar values, and want to work together. If the relationship is adversarial, you might as well stay home and watch TV. Sounds like this guy doesn't really understand proper therapeutic method. Regardless of how good his results might be with treating PTSD. He also needs to understand that his methods are not appropriate for everyone. If a professional life coach behaved in this manner, he would be disqualified from coaching. It's very amateur behavior to push anything on the client. The client must set the agenda in order for there to be buy-in.

@Lenny How can you say you have control when you cannot even locate yourself? What is the thing which is in control? You have no idea. You should really spend some time sitting down and observing this illusion of control. You clearly cannot control your thoughts. You cannot even control your own body. Do you blink your eyes? Do you pump your heart? Do you breathe? Do you move your legs when you walk? Do you think? Do you regenerate your own cells? Do you replicate and transcribe your DNA? No! You have no control over anything. Even the thought, "But I have some control!" is not under your control. See my vid called Free Will vs Determinism for more.

@ChimpBrain Look into Reichean therapy. It's all about this.

@Revolutionary Think From before I was 10 years old. I was always self-actualizing in some degree, just not calling it that and not always as directly as now. I suspect that some people are just born more conscious than others. Not to say I'm better than anyone, but to me it just doesn't make sense how people can not question life and not aspire to grow fully.

You'd have to very clearly define what is meant by "self-actualization" and "meaning" in this context.

Good, keep it up. Don't get discouraged by backsliding when it happens.

@LRyan The best techniques that I know of for PTSD are neuro feedback training and psychedelics (specifically MDMA). I think doing Vipassana retreats or the like would also work wonders for PTSD. Don't expect it to be easy though. All of these methods lead to healing, but healing requires emotional labor.

@Loreena By doing the work. Self-inquiry done long enough leads to surrender. You cannot shortcut the process. You cannot will the surrender (because there is no free will). You cannot fake the surrender. As all worthwhile things, it takes work.

The whole challenge here is: How can you grasp hold of something which is nothing? The mind cannot do it because the mind is a set of experiences. Every thought is an experience, and is something by definition. The mind needs to exhaust itself searching the haystack of experience before it finally realizes that it keeps looking in the wrong way. Mind is not up to this task. It must surrender itself.

@bobbyward As I said above, make a distinction between perception/experience and Absolute Awareness. Awareness is not perceived because it's what's doing perception. But you can BE it. You are it right now! You're just not aware that you're it. Because it's SUBTLE. It's not a material object like you're used to experiencing. The nature of awareness is such that it is aware of itself. It's the only thing that's fundamental to reality. Everything else is modulation of awareness. Instead of thinking of reality as made up of atoms or space/time or The Universe, think of reality as a cloud of empty awareness within which "stuff" is awared. That stuff is what we normally call "the universe". Even space and time are "stuff". Even existence is stuff. Everything is stuff except awareness.

@Echoes Of course you struggle with this. If you were aware of the infinite field, you would be enlightened, and you wouldn't have any questions. Infinite empty awareness is not anything. No words can describe emptiness. Space-like is a metaphor. It's not exactly right, but similar. There is no way to understand it without actually becoming it. What's key here is that you make a distinction between all experiences on the one hand, and the field of infinite empty awareness on the other. The practice of self-inquiry is to DISCRIMINATE between the two. You have to constantly push back experience until you run up against the infinite empty field within which all experience take place. You have to understand that emptiness is extremely subtle. Yet you are overwhelmed with gross experiences. You are MESMERIZED by experiences. It's all you basically know. You don't know how to look for anything else but more experience. So you have to slowly train your mind to focus on not-experience (whatever that is, you can't yet know).

@Maorice Excellent work!

@Big_D As Martin Ball talks about, pyschedelics can definitely create psycho-physical energy releases. My 5-meo breakthough had such a powerful energy release that it pealed the skin on all 10 fingertips for about 2 weeks. Like a lifetime of repressed physical baggage was shot out of me.

What evidence is there that you are that human body? None! Take a close look at your direct experience. Your coffee table is as much you as your body. How else could you access the coffee table unless it was you? The body doesn't "perceive" anything. The body is perceived, it doesn't do any perceiving. The body and the coffee table are both just perceptions which arise within the infinite empty field of awareness << which is the real you. Ask yourself, how can one perception perceive another? Because that's what you're currently stuck on. You actually think the perception called "body" perceives all the other perceptions. But this is patently silly. Take an honest look at how your experience ACTUALLY works. This is not the thread for that discussion.

Hehe, depends on which school of psychology you and your therapist subscribe to. Some schools are great, but of course most Western psychology is terrible because it fails to understand or address the root existential issues. It fails to talk about all the spiritual truths without which true healing is virtually impossible. And don't get me started on the therapists who issue pills for things like depression, ADD, and anxiety. But "self-actualization" is a Western psychology term. If you're gonna use a therapist, find one who's into Humanistic Psychology, Transpersonal Psychology, Positive Psychology, CBT, Gestalt Psychology, Reichian Therapy, etc. If your therapist is "new-agey", that's a great sign. If he's like a doctor, that's a terrible sign. Psycho-analyzing your past can have some value, but it's generally not a good technique for growth. You're much better off spending that 1 hour meditating, journaling, contemplating, or self-inquiring.

Fantastic! Some great holistic understanding right there.

@Barna I can confirm the sleeping part. Rarely I will get an experience of God in my sleep. It's quite awakening even in this dim form.

Again, be very careful here. You can still FEEL something, but not "it". There is no "it". "It", meaning "body", is a conceptual construct which doesn't exist. Also notice, that there is no direct connection between a body feeling and a body visual. Also notice, that you say, "I can still feel it", which means you are not it. Because you are the feeler, not the feeling. So what is that "I"? Also notice, when you're taking a nap, you don't feel your body.